The Quiet Type

by Summer Prescott

  “Papa Guido’s,” a cheery, feminine voice announced on the other end of the phone.

  Before Brad could answer, Susannah popped up behind the couch, secured the veterinarian in a headlock, disgusted to see that he’d had one hand on the phone and the other in his lap, and pressed the chloroformed cloth to his nose and mouth. He dropped the phone, trying to break free of his attacker’s iron grip, and struggled mightily, but due to the angle of her hold and the element of surprise, he was ineffective in his efforts, and eventually succumbed.

  “Hello? Anybody there?” the young woman who had answered the call asked, before cursing and hanging up.

  Susannah’s eyes traveled greedily up and down the limp body which was now sprawled on the couch, fixating on the pulse throbbing in his neck.

  “Oh Doggie Doctor, we’re gonna have some fun,” she chuckled, then ran to the kitchen for the duct tape.

  **

  Bradley Dobbins had one hell of a headache. He tried to move and couldn’t. His eyes shot open, darting about in anger and terror, and the first thing that swam into his vision was the bland face of Susannah Eckels. Infuriated, he tried desperately to move, but found that, as he lay on his back in the middle of the kitchen floor, his hands were secured at the wrists and somehow fastened to the floor, his legs were bound together at the ankles and knees and secured to the floor, and duct tape criss-crossed his torso, head and neck securing him to the floor. He was covered in the strong, sticky stuff, and a strip had been placed across his mouth for good measure.

  He tried to scream at the woman hovering above him with a psychotic smile, but his efforts only resulted in a high pitched, muffled sound coming out of his nose. He kept it up until Susannah, tiring of the noise, leaned over and pinched his nostrils shut. His faced reddened, then purpled from lack of air, and just as he was on the verge of passing out, she released her hold, letting him choke down precious breaths, his eyes watering.

  “Naughty boy,” Susannah admonished. “It won’t go well for you if you try to make noise. How does it feel?” she asked.

  Bradley’s brow furrowed.

  “Oh, is that a confusing question? Let me be more clear…how does it feel being completely helpless? Knowing that the power of life and death is in my capable hands…how does that feel?” she smiled in a predatory manner that seemed to agitate the doctor.

  “That’s what I wanted to see,” she practically purred, feeling the tension and fear emanating from the naked and vulnerable man.

  Susannah picked up a butcher knife that she had lying on a towel next to where she knelt beside Bradley’s head, along with some other particularly interesting painmakers, and held it up, admiring the glimmer of light along the blade.

  “You really should sharpen your knives you know,” she mused, dangling the knife inches from his nose as his eyes went wide with fear. “See, when they’re not sharp, they tend to tear the flesh, rather than slicing through it nice and easy, and that’s just a shame. Sloppy really,” she remarked, being entirely honest. “Here, let me show you.”

  Dobbins’ chest heaved as he panted quick, scared breaths through his nose, his eyes on the blade that she lowered next to his cheek.

  “You have enormous ears,” the killer commented. “They’ll make perfect flowers for my skin tree,” she murmured, bending down to get a closer look.

  The veterinarian felt a searing pain shooting through the side of his head and screamed through his nose. Susannah let out an exaggerated sigh.

  “I told you not to do that,” she said, pinching his nose shut again, this time allowing him to pass out.

  The skin artist took advantage of the fact that her source material had gone quiet, and cut off not just one, but both ears, tucking them into a bag that she’d take home when she was done. When Bradley came to this time, he immediately began a low, continuous keening sound through his nose that Susannah found not just tolerable, but somehow actually satisfying.

  “Yeah, that’s gotta hurt,” she commented, nodding. “This will too.”

  She’d noticed a pattern of moles on the veterinarian’s ribs that almost formed the shape of a heart, so she took a pair of hair cutting scissors that she’d found in the bathroom, and began snipping a heart shaped piece of flesh out of Bradley’s side, careful to get only the topmost layers of skin. The skin itself was supple, giving way after stretching a bit between the blades of the shears, and she was thankful that he apparently moisturized fairly regularly – it was great for making nice, smooth pieces, even after dehydration. His ears and side bled profusely, and she let them, placing kitchen towels on either side of his head and beside his body, to keep the blood from pooling around him.

  “Don’t worry. I noticed that you had your Persian carpet cleaned, so I brought you out here. It would be a shame to ruin such a lovely rug,” Susannah assured the terrified bleeding man who begged her with his eyes.

  “Oh, don’t look so sad. I’m just showing you how it feels when someone treats you like they own you. This pain,” she jabbed a gloved finger into the raw cut where his left ear used to be and he nearly fainted again. “This pain is nothing compared to having a father who hates you,” she explained bitterly.

  Bradley Dobbins couldn’t control the tears if he wanted to, they flowed over the wounds on the sides of his head, mingling with his blood. He couldn’t control other bodily functions either, and Susannah shook her head in disapproval when his bladder voided.

  “That’s just gross. I intended to be somewhat gentle and to get this done rather quickly, but now I’m going to have to let you suffer.”

  She nicked an artery in his thigh with medical precision. He’d bleed out eventually, but he had a lot of pain to endure before he did. Once the cut was made, she went about harvesting various body parts and skin pieces for her artwork, pausing periodically to strategically place more towels on the veterinarian as rich, metallic-scented blood oozed from him, becoming more and more sluggish as his heart worked harder and harder to pump less and less. By the time she was done, Bradley Dobbins, who was still very much alive and out of his mind with pain, looked like a patchwork quilt that had been doused in blood.

  “Well Doctor, I believe that my work here is done. I normally like to watch the last spark of life slip away from the oppressors, but you disgust me, so I’m not going to dignify you by witnessing your surrender. You’re going to die hurting and alone, and I’m going to feel a tremendous amount of satisfaction about that,” she explained, slipping off her gloves and stashing them in the bag with various parts of Bradley that she’d harvested.

  Susannah stood to go, placing her hands in the small of her back, stretching to get the kinks out, after having knelt so long, and was suddenly blinded by a piercing light which shone through the sliding doors in the kitchen.

  “Put your hands behind your head and freeze!” Sheriff Arlen Bemis ordered from the other side of the glass, as a deputy came crashing through the front door.

  Knowing that there was no escape, Susannah smiled a secret smile and did as she was told.

  **

  Law enforcement came charging into Bradley Dobbins’ home from all directions, horrified at carnage on display, and two deputies began working frantically at the duct tape, while a third was tasked with handcuffing and escorting Susannah to his patrol car.

  “Oh…” Susannah paled and slumped like she was going to faint.

  The deputy reflexively moved to slide his hands down beneath her armpits to keep her from falling to the floor, which turned out to be a grave mistake on his part. Susannah snapped out of her ruse and elbowed the deputy in the crotch, hard. When he fell to his knees, she scrambled out the door, brushing past a startled and somewhat out of shape Sheriff Bemis, who immediately wheeled around and ran after the fleeing fugitive.

  “Backup!” he huffed over his shoulder, trying desperately to keep up with the woman who was now more than familiar with the dark alleys and side yards of the veterinarian’s neighborhood.

 
; Two deputies realized what was happening and came charging past the aging sheriff as Susannah neared the woods. Adrenalin flowed through her like a live wire and she knew that if she could make it to the cover of the trees, she was home free. She had even stashed a bag in the next county, just in case a situation like this ever arose. Her thighs burned, and her lungs wheezed, but she was exhilarated as she heard the footsteps pounding behind her. Twenty more feet and she’d lose them in the trees. Ten. Five. Success.

  She darted in and out of the trees, making certain to take a route where there were plenty of tripping hazards of which she was aware and the deputies were not, smiling to herself when she heard the occasional thud or exclamation of pain behind her. As the sounds grew more distant, she knew that she’d be able to relax soon. It would be a bit of time before they had a chance to either get dogs in the woods, or a helicopter in the air, and by then she’d be somewhere in the next county, where the tiny towns were few and far between. She’d planned meticulously for a day just like this one, and it tickled her to realize that she was about to get away with murder, when she’d been right under the sheriff’s nose.

  **

  Sheriff Arlen Bemis was livid. He’d marshalled every available deputy and officer within several miles of Pellman to join in the chase. He would find Susannah Eckels, and when he did, he’d make sure that she went away for a very long time, permanently if he could swing it. She hadn’t gone home, her milquetoast husband had been entirely unaware of his wife’s morbid hobby.

  “Sheriff, take line one,” a deputy popped his head into Arlen’s office. “They picked up your fugitive over in Cassel County, they’re taking her in right now.”

  Bemis snatched up his office phone and punched the flashing button. “Don’t let her out of your sight, and take every precaution. She’ll do whatever unspeakable things that she can think of to get away,” he barked into the phone, not bothering with formalities.

  After being reassured by the deputy on the line that she’d be secured in the Cassel County jail in no time, Arlen grabbed his keys and ran for the door, knowing that he wouldn’t feel secure until Susannah Eckels was in his custody.

  CHAPTER 36

  * * *

  The Hard Cold Truth

  Sheriff Arlen Bemis glared at the nervous young man who sat across the desk from him. Tanner Benson had come in of his own accord, saying that he had some information about Timothy and Susannah Eckels.

  “If you got something to say, you better start talking, boy. Otherwise you’re just wasting my time and I don’t take kindly to people who waste my time,” Bemis growled.

  It had been one helluva night. Bradley Dobbins was in intensive care, and the serial killer that he thought he’d already found, turned out to be Susannah Eckels. The sheriff had to swallow his embarrassment and let the homeless man who’d been named as the murderer out of jail. When he’d seen Bradley’s shoes on the woman’s feet, he’d figured out what she’d done immediately. She’d worn Jorge’s shoes when she killed him, and the homeless guy’s shoes when she’d killed the cheerleader. In all his days in law enforcement, Arlen had never encountered as sick a mind as the one behind Susannah Eckels’ cold eyes.

  “Uh…I just wanted you to know that Mr. Eckels wasn’t responsible for the guy who was alive in the coffin.”

  “Yes, he was responsible. He didn’t do his job, and I don’t see why that’s any of your concern,” Bemis replied dismissively.

  “He didn’t do it. He was set up,” Tanner insisted.

  “Set up?” The youth had managed to capture the sheriff’s attention, and he leaned forward. “What are you talkin’ about, boy?”

  “I worked for the vet, Dr. Dobbins, and he hated Mr. Eckels for some reason. So he paid me to go get a job at the mortuary, so that I could tell him if Mr. Eckels did anything weird.”

  This was clearly news to the sheriff, who raised an eyebrow.

  “Did he?” Bemis asked.

  “Did he what?” Tanner was confused.

  “Did Eckels do anything weird?”

  The young man shook his head. “No, that’s just it. He’s like the most by-the-book, boring dude ever, even if he has a cool job.”

  The sheriff stared at Tanner as he considered that last remark, but moved on.

  “So what did Dobbins get out of hiring you to spy on Eckels then?”

  “Well, when Mr. Eckels didn’t do anything, Dr. Dobbins told me that he’d pay me a bunch of money if I did something for him. He said he’d pay for me to go to school.”

  “What did he want you to do?”

  “He wanted me to pretend to embalm someone who wasn’t dead,” Tanner confessed, his cheeks coloring with shame. He was still kicking himself for having sold out Tim, who loved animals and had never even made a snide remark about anyone.

  “That don’t make a lick of sense,” Arlen pursed his lips and glared at the young man in front of him.

  “But it’s true. Doc made a lot of money by treating animals with these stupid supplements that don’t work, and he was losing business because people were going to Mr. Eckels to have their pets put to sleep.”

  “So the fool was right about that,” Bemis mused.

  “Yeah, but Mr. Eckels stopped doing it, because he couldn’t stand taking lives, even animal ones, even when they were suffering.”

  “He sure as heck picked the wrong mate,” the sheriff commented sardonically. “So how in the world did you pretend to embalm someone?” his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “Doc gave one of his friends some kind of drug that made it look like he was dead, but he really wasn’t, and then the guy’s family said that the funeral had to be right away so that the drug wouldn’t wear off until he was in the coffin.”

  “That was a stupid risk. What if he hadn’t woken up in time?”

  “Well, I guess the Doc had practiced with the drug on some of the bigger animals to see how long it took to wear off,” Tanner shrugged. “He used pigs I think, and big dogs.”

  “But why wouldn’t Eckels have done the embalming? You’re not certified,” the sheriff demanded.

  “Because that was the night that they had to dig the really big dude out of his house, and Mr. Eckels didn’t have time to do it, so I told him that I did. I already had the guy dressed and everything before he came back, so all he had to do was put on some makeup.”

  “Interesting how those two deaths coincided,” Bemis said, more to himself than the young man in front of him. “And why on earth would Myron Biggs, a local celebrity, have gone along with such a scheme?”

  “Probably because of these, Sheriff,” Tanner pulled a manila envelope out from under his thin jacket. “I found the originals in Doc’s office a couple of weeks ago, and I made these copies in case he decided that he didn’t want to pay me after I helped him.”

  Arlen Bemis’s face registered shock as he flipped through the photos which showed Myron Biggs in an intimate situation with a young tattooed man, who was bent over a picnic table.

  “So, you see, it really wasn’t Mr. Eckels fault. Do you think you could maybe talk to that family so that they don’t press charges? It was a setup, Sheriff, it wouldn’t be right to make him take the fall for all this,” Tanner pointed out.

  “I’m gonna send a deputy in here and you’re going to make an official statement, you understand boy?” Arlen stood and put on his hat.

  “Yes sir,” Tanner nodded.

  “Sit tight, I got some folks to talk to,” the sheriff muttered on his way out.

  **

  Arlen Bemis was not looking forward to visiting the shack from which David Thurston, the obese young man who had died in bed, had been extricated, but he needed to speak with Verna, the boy’s mother. When he pulled up in front of the shack, after his long drive through the country, the sheriff was surprised to see a shiny compact sitting in front of the house. Verna Thurston was loading the little car with a suitcase and what looked like a box of photo albums.

  “Afternoon
, Ms. Thurston,” he greeted the grieving mother, taking off his hat.

  “Afternoon, Sheriff,” she nodded and set the box of photo albums on the ground beside the car.

  “Mind if I talk with you for a minute?” he asked casually, noting that the back seat of the car was already full.

  “I ain’t got but a few minutes. I’m heading to my sister’s soon as I get my stuff loaded,” Verna replied, hands on hips.

  “Tell you what, you can keep loading up, and I’ll help you carry your things while we talk,” he offered, glad that he wouldn't have to go inside and stay there.

  “That’ll work. Mighty kind of ya,” she nodded, moving back toward the shack, with Arlen trailing after her.

  “You have any visitors last week?”

  “Nope, it was just me and David here,” Verna called over her shoulder, weaving her way through stacks of trash and grabbing a box of plastic kitchen ware that she handed to the sheriff.

  “No one stopped by?” Arlen moved quickly toward the door, trying to take as few breaths as possible.

  “Well, now that you mentioned it, the vet came out for a house call right before David passed. My little Ringo had a swollen paw that he took a look at.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Yeah, he done took off and I ain’t seen him since,” Verna shrugged.

  The sheriff breathed deeply once outside.

  “Did the vet visit with David at all?”

  “Sure did. Went back and saw him for a bit. He was the last one to see him alive,” she started to choke up and Bemis sighed inwardly.

  “Looks like you’ve got a new car,” the sheriff commented casually.

  “New to me. It’s kind of an old car though,” she shrugged, avoiding his eyes.